Monday, November 24, 2014

Owl Attends the National Book Awards

In general
Owl is not fond of ritzy parties. They make her break out into a nervous sweat.
She’s usually kitted out in a dress that makes her look pot-bellied, from
another century, like a depraved poodle or all of the above. Usually she
ends up hiding somewhere within easy reach of the desert buffet or lurking near
the coat check. She’s never really understood why people like parties.

That is,
until Shep invited her to the National Book Awards. Owl asked Shep if a onesie
covered in poetry counted as black tie. He informed her it did not and he was
wearing a tux. Deflated, Owl took herself dress shopping with a seriousness she
usually devotes to procuring desert. This involved poking her head out of the
changing room and begging a Russian woman who was also trying on dresses to
make the final decision.

Woman: You
are going to a wedding?

Owl: An
award ceremony.

Woman: Huh?

Owl: The
National Book Awards! The National Book Awards! The---

The woman
told Owl to get a navy dress before Owl could burst into song. Owl paid up and
wrote the cost off as the price of worshiping at the altar of books. If you’re
going to meet your heroes, the last thing you want to worry about is looking
like a poodle.

The National
Book Awards were held at Hotel Cipriani, which has the kind of
high-ceiling-marble-hallway grandeur found in banks from the Gilded Age. Shep
commented his high school prom had been held here. Owl told Shep he was bougey
and then stopped talking. The high ceilings had soft blue lights glowing from
them, the dinner tables were all covered in books, and off to the side of the
room was a red carpet. Owl was awed into silence.

“I just saw
Neil Gaiman,” someone commented.

Owl’s heart
stopped. She read all of Gaiman’s books growing up and then reread them and
reread them until her parents demanded she read something else.

“Do you want
his autograph?” Shep asked.

Owl managed
to nod and squeak.

Shep pushed
her in Neil Gaiman’s general direction. Owl tiptoed up to Gaiman, tapped him on
the shoulder (that’s right, Owl touched Neil Gaiman and is never washing again)
and vomited out a flood of words about being-such-a-fan-loved-your-books. She
added that one of her friends lives in his neighborhood, but ya know, neglected
to say which friend or mention the neighborhood. In addition to being a killer
writer, and super attractive, Neil Gaiman is also very very nice about talking
to incoherent fans. He whipped out a fountain pen and signed Owl’s program, and
said he was absolutely charmed.

Owl
was reduced to a speechless pile of mush with huge pulsing gooey hearts in her
eyes.

Shep wanted
to know who Gaiman was. Heathen.

When Owl
recovered, she and Shep made their way over to the tables and were seated. Owl
must have looked dimwitted with delight because the waiter kept stopping by to
ask if she was alright, and if he could replace her food with salmon or
something vegetarian. Owl thanked him profusely and managed not to sob with
happiness on his sleeve. She restrained herself from staking a claim on the
books in the center of the table, but later set one—and only one—aside for a
keepsake.

Lemony
Snicket—Lemony Snicket!!—got up to MC. Owl spent hours reading his books,
puzzling out his numerous mysteries, and wondering who the man behind the name
was. Snicket in real life, it turns out, is hilarious. He speaks in a deep ponderous
voice—and says things that are slightly uncomfortable, and then while you’re
wondering what he’s going to do with all the tension in the room, he tosses in
a joke, and everyone dissolves into laughter.

Lemony
Snicket: When I decided to MC the National Book Awards, people said I was only
doing it to promote my new novel. But I ask, how could I promote my new novel, We
are Pirates, when I’m about to introduce the presenter of the prize for
non-fiction?

Neil Gaiman
got up and talked about what Ursula Le Guin meant to him. (One of Owl’s
favorite writers talking about one of Owl’s favorite writers. Owl had to fan
herself.) Ursula Le Guin gave a killer speech on how important it is to
remember writing is an art form, not a commodity. And Owl who used to write for
the pure love of it, but spends far too much time obsessing over traffic and
clicks, wanted to stand up and cheer.

Louise Gluck
got up on stage in a killer vah-vah-vah-voom dress that was all black, with
sheer gauze, and said brokenly, “I’m not going to cry because that’s such a
waste of time,” and then so clearly was crying. “Losing is hard,” she said,
“but winning is harder, because there is no script.” Owl wanted to pat her on
the back, because it must be hard—to work and work, to lose (Gluck has been a
finalist before), and then to suddenly, when you are least expecting it, to
win.

Owl sort of
blanked on non-fiction, but cheered for Evan Osnos and let Shep explain Osnos's
writing and career at the New Yorker. “Non-fiction is the only important
category,” Shep said.

Phil Klay
accepted the award for fiction for his book Redeployment which
was based on his experiences in Iraq. Klay smiled, cracked jokes, and then
looked straight into the heart of the audience, speaking slowly, as if the
words were lost and a long time coming. “I came back not knowing what to
think,” he said. “What do you do when you’re trying to explain in words, to the
father of a fallen Marine, exactly what that Marine meant to you?”

The room
went silent, as Klay asked impossible questions. What do you tell middle
schoolers who want to know if you have killed anyone and are disappointed when
you haven’t? What do you say when the unspeakable has happened to you and the
people you care about? What do you say when it’s still happening?

Klay didn't
have an answer. Klay's answer was to write.

The book
awards were over. Owl got up and went to the bathroom. This, it turns out, was
a tactical error. By the time she came back all of the books decorating the tables
were gone, including the one she had set aside. Owl swallowed her
disappointment and dragged Shep out to the red carpet where the winners were
getting their photographs taken.

They spotted
Klay holding his award, talking to his wife. Neither Owl nor Shep had read Redeployment, but
Owl wanted badly to speak to Klay, to let him know his words meant something
and that she was going to read his book as soon as she could.

Owl and Shep
gathered their courage and congratulated Klay. Klay was lovely. He asked Owl
and Shep if they wanted to hold his award—they did—and laughed when then
staggered under its weight.

Thank you,
Owl told him. Thank you for writing. Thank you for writing about things we need
to hear about.

“Good luck
with your own writing,” Klay told them. When Owl ran into him later, he had a
smile and a nod for her.

Then they
spotted Evan Osnos, the non-fiction winner, and it was Shep’s turn to wibble
and Owl’s turn to push Shep to ask for an autograph.

Osnos told
Shep and Owl to write about far-away places. “The world wants to hear about
places they haven’t been to,” he said, and Owl and Shep took heart. Shep writes
about China, and Owl about India and Indonesia. Both of them have been told
that American audiences don’t care.

And finally,
Owl spotted Jacqueline Woodson, the young adult winner. “Thank you for writing
young adult books,” Owl told her.

“You don’t
have a book,” Woodson said. “Nevermind, take mine.” She handed over her copy of
Brown Girl
Dreaming and signed it. Owl’s night was complete.

Owl looked
hard for other writers, but the trouble with writers is that their words are
famous, not their photographs. She couldn’t recognize anyone even though she
knew Michael Cunningham, Art Spiegelman, and Marilynne Robinson were in the
crowd. Even though she’d spent hours in English class staring at Michael
Cunningham’s photograph on the back of The Hours, she
was afraid to make inquiries on the off chance that someone who looked like
Cunningham was actually just a doppelganger.

Owl
retreated to the edge of the dance floor. On the dance floor men and women
dressed in their black tie best spun around and around in dizzying circles with
books tucked under their arms. This was a gathering of people who worship the
written word, and everyone was decked out in their best for the sheer love of
books.

And Owl was
incandescently, indescribably happy. True, she had not read---honestly, any of
the books on the short list or the long list. But she was delighted to have a
chance to congratulate the winners. To dress up and attend a fancy party thrown
in honor of books.

Owl was, in
many ways, a strange misfit of a child. She was asthmatic and she was lonely,
so she spent much of her time reading. Books saved her when she was too sick to
go outside, they saved her during family reunions in foreign countries, and
during awkward social events.

When Owl
read, it didn’t matter where she was, the world and all of its troubles fell
away. All that mattered was Owl read, and having read, knew something more of
the world. For that, she wanted to thank everyone who sets pen to paper and
goes about the horribly difficult task of writing in a world that pays most
writers in pennies and skepticism.

Thank you,
and thank you, she wanted to tell everyone. Thank you for being here, thank you
for letting me be here. And in that moment of gratitude, Owl understood why
people throw ritzy parties. Sometimes there’s no better way to say thank you
than to throw a huge fancy party to show people that they are important, worthy
of pomp, ceremony and splendor.